New well tank

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tammybrian2

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Hello,
i just replaced my well tank with an amtrol well x trol wx202xl. this is a 26 gallon tank.
i have a 40/60 switch that is set to 36/56. before installing the tank, i lowered the pressure in the tank down to 34 psi. reconnected the plumbing, filled the tank, emptied the tank, rechecked pressure, pressure was still 34 psi.
turned the water on, the tank filled. according to amtrol's specs, this partiuclar model (wx 202xl) is suppose to have a 7 gallon drawdown. i am getting about 5.25 gallons. i can't figure out why the discrepacy between the stated drawdown and what i'm actually getting. wondering if anyone might have any ideas as to why i'm seeing this?
 

Reach4

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I looked at http://www.amtrol.com/media/documents/wellxtrol/MC7025_04_14_WXTsizingCard.pdf

OK... it agrees.

When you do your measurement, stop using water while the pump is still running. Does the pressure rise to 56 and stay there?

Another possibility is that the air pressure gauge and the water pressure gauge has different calibration. If you check the air pressure while the water pressure is between say 40 and 50, your water pressure gauge reading should be close to what your air pressure gauge shows.
 

tammybrian2

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yes, that is the chart that i'm going by. the wx 202 xl shows a drawdown of 7 gallons at 40/60. my switch is 36/56. so the question is why am i only getting a little over 5 gallons of drawdown?
 

tammybrian2

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i checked the pressure again, when pressure was 38psi, 49psi and 56psi. my gauged matched what the pressure gage was showing. i drained water from the tank so the pump would kick on, pump shut off at 56 psi as expected. i do see that the pressure is slowly dropping on the gauge when no water is running in the house. it does not look like there is a check valve in place either. i did see a couple of droplets of water near the tank connection, but it seems like those are more from the pipes sweating than a leak, since i am not seeing the water drip.
 

Reach4

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It is usually best to have the only check valve be at the pump.

i do see that the pressure is slowly dropping on the gauge when no water is running in the house.
Does that continue, or does the dropping stop after a while?

If it continues to drop, the pump will kick on on its own once the pressure drops to 36. That could be due to a small leak in the checkvalve, but it could also be a small leak somewhere else. An advantage to having the pump kick on is that the pipe stays pressurized rather than potentially sucking in something through a leak. How long does that take?

If it stops dropping, it is something else. That could be because the check valve takes a little time to close all of the way, or it could be that something elastic is stretching slowly for a bit. It could be that the pressure gauge overshot for a bit and is settling into place. These are nothing to worry about IMO. I am not a pro. I saw something like this on mine. I decided to record my digital pressure gauge as an AVI. In it I could hear the pressure switch open, and that marks about time zero on the graph. I graphed the pressure displayed on the gauge by looking at the AVI frames. Here is the graph.
img_1.png
 
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Valveman

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My tank calculator shows that tank only holds 5.66 gallons at 36/56. And you maybe losing some to the leak while you are measuring the drawdown. If drawdown is that important, you should not be using such a small tank anyway.
 

tammybrian2

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i dont know the specifics on the motor, i do know that it takes 30 seconds to fill this new tank, with drawdown of a little over 5 gallons makes it roughly 10gpm. my tank is located in my crawl space, and the opening to get in to that crawl space is not very big. i selected this tank based on the tank size that was installed when the house was built (only a 20 gallon tank, which was my first mistake), and for the little extra capacity over the standard 202 model, and the fact that it would fit through the opening to the crawl space. knowing what i know now (had i not been in a rush to install a new tank) after looking in to this more, it would have taken a little work but i think i could have fit the WX 250 model. the opening to the crawlspace is 22 inches. i did talk with amtrol regarding this as well, their response in to my drawdown question was "that's all it can do" even though there is a 2 gallon discrepancy. they also said they use a calculation to determine this. their only other suggestion was to install a second tank. in regards to the pressure dropping after the tank fills, the pressure does drop from 56 to 54 psi withing 15-25 seconds, then i watched it for another five minutes and it did look like it was slowly dropping down to 53psi, but it was extremely slow. so i may look at putting in a second tank of the same size. the amtrol rep said it should take about a minute for the pump to fill the tank when it cycles.
 

Craigpump

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You don't have enough tank for the pump.

You have two options, install at least one more tank to give your pump decent run time or put a CSV before the tank.
 

Valveman

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Yeah and the one minute of run time thing is a bare minimum. Adding another tank will just get you to the minimum 1 minute of run time. Adding a Cycle Stop Valve you could get as long as 5 minutes of run time with the WX202 tank you have. However, it would be best to set the CSV pressure in the middle of the pressure switch on/off pressure and you will get about 2 minutes of run time with that size tank. Plus with a CSV you will get constant pressure in the house and absolutely no cycling for long term uses of water.
 

tammybrian2

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if/when i put a second tank in, can it be larger than the 202xl? i mentioned above i might be able to fit the wx-250 model in to my crawlspace.
 

Valveman

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Sure you can use different size tanks together. But the WX250 only holds 12 gallons and the 20 gallon tank only holds 5 gallons. So you would still be cycling the pump for every 17 gallons used. Pressure tanks were never meant to store any water, just to limit the cycling of the pump. If you have a Cycle Stop Valve to take care of the cycling, the pressure tank is almost a moot point.
 

Reach4

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17 gallons would let you do about 10 flushes and a pot of coffee.
 

tammybrian2

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just wanted to say a quick thank you to everyone who repsonded to my issue. i'll look in to getting a CSV. --thanks again --Brian
 

Valveman

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It doesn't really matter how old the pump is. The CSV cannot do anything about the cycling damage that has already been done to the pump, but it can stop any more damage from happening.
 

PumpMd

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It doesn't really matter how old the pump is. The CSV cannot do anything about the cycling damage that has already been done to the pump, but it can stop any more damage from happening.

I wasn't asking you! but it can stop any more damage from happening....:rolleyes:
 

PumpMd

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Pump Companies say 8-10yrs for average life and you just pasted that with your small tank that short cycles the pump. Just remember with whatever you choose to do, check your precharge in the tank or tanks from time to time to make sure they are holding their precharge
 
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